One Hit KO

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a stupid deck idea for you.  A stupid deck idea is like a regular deck analysis, but for some reason we do not have a lot of confidence in the deck.  It could be more of a fun deck, or it could be a good deck that we just didn’t test out enough.   A comment on one of my recent articles inspired me to check this deck out.  It is kind of a swarm deck that features Empoleon as the main attacker and Aerodactyl in a Plus Power like role.  We will get to that later, but now we must say “hi” to Pedro.  Hey Pedro.

Hey Pikkdogs.

Would you care to start us off with a news story?

Sure.  Journalist Dylan Byers at “The Poltico” blog is reporting that the POTUS, President Barrack Obama, has told us a lie.  He did some researching and found out that in his 1995 Autobiography, Obama fabricated a story about a girl friend, when in truth no such girl friend exists. 

He lied about having a girl friend?  And that’s a scandal?  I made up about 75 girl friends, I hope I don’t come under fire for this.

Maybe there should be more of an investigation going on in this matter.  I don’t think you should be able to lie to the world of Pokemon players.  You always talk about your collection of “Pokemon Groupies”.  Describe one of them. 

Hmmmmmmmmm…………well…………..of course I can name you one of my Pokemon Groupies, I have a bunch of them whom I have a lot of casual sex with.

Then, what is the name of one of them?

Okay, one of them is Annie,  a reporter from Baltimore.  She recently got engaged to her fiance, Walter.

You just described Meg Ryan’s character in the movie “Sleepless in Seattle.” 

Oh, I sometimes get them confused.  Okay, give me another chance.  Another one of my groupies is Janet.  She is originally from Indiana and now lives in California with her two roommates.  She’s great, she  has short brown hair and  works in a flowershop.

You just described Joyce Dewitt’s character in Three’s Company.  I’m beginning to think that you don’t have any groupies. 

Well, if the President doesn’t have to stop making up girlfriends, then neither shall I.

Seems fair, start the article. 

The Purpose of Aeropoleon

The goal of this deck is to build of a steady stream of Empoleons while having Aerodactyls on the bench.  Empoleon has a Jumpluff like attack that does 10 damage for every Pokemon in play for one energy.  It also has a built in draw engine that lets you draw two cards if you discard one.  Aerodactyl has the Ability that lets you deal an extra 10 damage for every Aerodactyl in play.  It is basically a free Plus Power on every attack.  The decks goal is simple, just keep on doing damage with Empoleon while Aerodactyl bumps up the amount of damage dealt.

This deck is kind of weird because it includes a Fossil Pokemon ( or a Restored Pokemon if you want to be politically correct, which I don’t).  There are two ways to get a fossil Pokemon out.  One of those is to play its corresponding card (in this case Old Amber) and hope it is one of the 7 last cards in your deck.  The other way is to play the Twist Mountain stadium card and hope you get heads on the coin flip to search out a fossil Pokemon and put it onto your bench.   These two ways are not great and they are far from efficient ways of getting these cards out, but they are not too unreasonable.

To help consistency in this deck  I added Smeargle CL.  Smeargle lets you use a supporter card that is in your opponent’s hand if Smeargle is active.  There are drawbacks to this of course, you  never know when you will hit a supporter or which one it will be, and it is hard to get Smeargle back to the bench because of his retreat cost.  There are a lot of drawbacks here, but I don’t think this deck would work very well if it didn’t have something like Smeargle in it.

Setup

On the first turn you will want to get Smeargle active.  This will help you get 4 Piplups on the bench.  You need to set yourself up for at least 1 Empoleon on turn 2, so your first turn is very important.  On your second turn you need to use Rare Candy to get an Empoleon, hopefully you will also be setting up a backup Empoleon.  Don’t forget that Empoleon has that built in draw engine, so you should be able to find almost any card you want.  Once you get an Empoleon out, you can start thinking about the fossils.  The easiest way is to get a Twist Mountain out and start flipping coins.  It can get frustrating if Aerodactyls always get stuck in your hand, but try to use Pokemon Communication to put them back in there.  Hopefully you will also  be finding the fossil cards and hitting heads on the Twist Mountain flips.  Once you get a bunch of Aerodactyls out you should be able to do a lot of damage.

The List

 

Below is the list of the deck that I tested.  I will tell you guys that I don’t like this deck how it is, and I would not run it like this.  I would probably take out Aerodactyl and try to find another partner for Empoleon.  If I wanted to fix this deck, I would probably take out the Old Ambers and see if that would give me a little more speed.

Pokemon-16

• 4-Piplup
• 2- Prinplup
• 4-Empoleon
• 2-Smeargle
• 4-Aerodactyl

Trainers-37

• Sage’s Training-3
• Oak’s New Theory-3
• Juniper-4
• Pokemon Collector-4
• Pokemon Catcher-3
• Junk Arm-4
• Dual Ball-1
• Pokemon Communication-3
• 3-Rare Candy
• 2-Switch
• 1-Super Rod
• 3-Twist Mountain
• 3-Old Amber

Energy-7

• 7-Water

Testing Reaction

I didn’t get to do a lot of testing with this deck, but I did do enough testing to form an opinion about it.  After testing, I just don’t like the deck.  I don’t mean to doom Empoleon, he could still work, but I think he needs a secondary attacker with him in the same deck.  Right now, all your opponent has to do is kill 3 Empoleons and 1 Piplup and the game is over.  The deck also needs something to cover the lightning weakness, it doesn’t really have a chance on its own against Zekrom.  So, we need a fighting type Pokemon to attack.

I also am not sold with Aerodactyl in this deck.  Right now you need at least 7 cards in this deck for Aerodactyl , more if you use Old Amber, that just takes up way too much space and hurts consistency.  Especially since the fossil Pokémon are never consistent even with those 10 cards.

There is a possibility that this deck could work with Terrakion NV, This will cover the lightning weakness, and will give you another attacker to use when an Empoleon goes down.  You do lose the extra damage that Aerodactyl brings, but you also gain the one million card slots that you need to give up in order to play a fossil Pokémon.  This idea seems like it could possibly work more than the original idea.

I will give you a little thoughts about things that were good with this deck when I tested it.  One of the good things about this deck is the draw engine that Empoelon gives us.  It almost always gives you enough cards to find what you are looking for, and that is a huge advantage.  Another good thing is Smeargle, it usually gives you the extra supporter you need to either setup or recover from a knockout.   The bad things are mostly about Aerodactyl.  Aerodactyl always gets stuck in your hand, and there’s nothing good about having a fossil Pokemon in your hand.  Plus, it always sucks when you flip tails or find no fossil Pokemon in the bottom 7 cards of your deck.  So, having fossil Pokemon really hurts consistency.  And what’s worse is that he always gets stuck active and you can’t really do anything when that happens.  There is one more bad thing about this deck, and that is the slow setup of Empoleon.  If you don’t get a good setup and the right cards on turn 2, you are kinda screwed.   You need a lot to get this deck right.

Conclusion

So what is the future of this deck?   I think that if you rework the deck, it could possibly work.  I do not like fossils in this deck, so you need something else.  I don’t wanna say that Empoleon will never work, but I think that you need a couple things in this format to change in order for the deck to be tier 1 or 2. 

Hey Pedro, its time to end the article.

Alright.  One of the biggest stories in the news is this mother of a 5 year-old girl who is accused of putting her in a tanning bed.  Have you seen this lady Pikkdogs?  The people at TMZ said that she looks like Admiral Akbar.

Oh yeah.  Well, then It is easy to see why she is saying that all of the attention she is getting is a “trap”.

Do you think she looks like Admiral Akbar?

A little bit.  Though I do think that she looks more like Cuba Gooding Jr, or maybe Isiah Washington.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that she is just one hamburger shy of going David Hasselhoff crazy.

Yes, but the bad thing is that we are all done and we have nothing more to talk about.

Well we could talk a little more, did you see the new Avengers movie?  That was pretty cool.   

Yeah, but I am just mad that they cut Ant Man out of the Avengers.  Ant Man is so  much cooler than Thor.

Ant Man is only good at a picnic.  Thor is much better, there is even a whole day named after him, Thursday. 

I guess you got a good point there.  There is no Ant Man day, at least not yet.  But, Ant Man is really cool and versatile.  He can shrink down to microscopic size, or he can grow to be as tall as a giant like Khloe Kardashian.

Maybe they can fit the good Dr. Pym into the next movie.

One can only hope.    Good night everybody.

Category: Stupid Deck Idea | Tags: Aerodactyl DE, Empoleon Dark Explorers, Empoleon DE dECK, Empoleon Deck